Movie review: This 'Woodstock' is a real buzz kill

Thursday

Aug 27, 2009 at 12:01 AMAug 27, 2009 at 3:25 AM

In “Taking Woodstock,” Ang Lee’s stoned-out version of the events leading up to “the greatest music festival the world has ever seen, exposing Woodstock for the cash cow that it was doesn’t interest him nearly as much as does a two-bit side player like Elliot Tiechberg, aka Elliot Tiber.

Al Alexander

Contrary to most people of my generation, I tend to look at the Woodstock Music Festival as the end of the counterculture movement, not the beginning.

Before that rain-filled, mud-caked weekend in the middle of August 1969, longhaired hippies and freaks were persona non-grada just about everywhere in the mainstream, especially on Madison Avenue.

But within weeks of the festival’s conclusion, it became obvious that not only do these kids sell; they buy much more than just pot and rolling papers.

Thus began the commercialization of a youth movement that reached its nadir at the much-mocked Woodstock 1999, featuring such prepackaged pretties as Bush, Jewel and Alanis Morissette. Not quite Hendrix and The Who, if you catch my drift.

Suddenly the Age of Aquarius had become the Age of Gucci and Prada. For this, I blame Michael Lang and his fellow twentysomething partners who conceived, staged and profited handsomely off their little hoedown 40 years ago on Max Yasgur’s farm.

In “Taking Woodstock,” Ang Lee’s stoned-out version of the events leading up to “the greatest music festival the world has ever seen,” you see the seeds of that I-me-mine mentality in Lang and his cohorts as they deal and dither with all the sincerity of used-car salesmen.

You especially see it in the Cheshire grin that peaks out from behind Lang’s to-die-for curly locks (worn here by Broadway sensation Jonathan Groff) as he tries to put on his best poker face while weighing an offer by Yasgur (well played by Eugene Levy) to rent his land to the fresh-faced hippies for a mere five grand (later upped to a more reasonable $75,000).

You also see it in the way Lang tosses out brown grocery sacks full of bundled cash to everyone whose services he requires. And then there’s his helicopter, his limo and his butt-kissing entourage following him like Smithers follows Mr. Burns.

It’s terrific irony: the corporate mogul in the tie-dyed duds dealing with the hicks of Bethel, N.Y., the same way Donald Trump deals with the peons whose houses stand in the way of his next golf course.

So, what does Lee do with this wonderful germ of an idea? Nothing! That’s right, noda, zilch, zippo. You see, the thought of making a movie exposing Woodstock for the cash cow that it was doesn’t interest him nearly as much as does a two-bit side player like Elliot Tiechberg, aka Elliot Tiber.

Elliot who? Precisely.

For the multitude of millions who haven’t read Tiber’s memoir, on which Lee’s film is based, he is the then 34-year-old president of the White Lake Chamber of Commerce who had the great idea of inviting the Lang gang over to his side of the Catskills after the wise townspeople of Wallkill, N.Y., threw the promoters out.

The rest, as they say, is history. But as we all know, history isn’t always interesting. Case in point, Elliot Tiber. As played by comedian Demetri Martin, Elliot is blander than watered-down whisky.

Sure, he provided a venue for the concert and the El Monaco motel he ran with his Russian immigrant parents (Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) served as a funky and rustic headquarters for the promoters in the weeks leading up to the festival. But beyond that, why does this guy deserve a movie, especially one made by a director as talented as Lee?

Lang and the dichotomous nature of his hippie businessman are what you’re really interested in, especially the charismatic way Groff plays him.

That’s not to say Martin doesn’t play Elliot well. Surprisingly, he does, far exceeding the expectations of a standup comedian who never really acted professionally before. But he’s repeatedly done in by a script penned by Lee’s frequent collaborator, James Shamus, who wraps himself up in the minutia of a story that almost no one outside of the Teichberg clan gives a hoot about.

Worse, he and Lee play fast and loose with the facts, beginning with their shaving nearly 10 years off Tiber’s age. Why? To make him more hip? More vulnerable.

They also shockingly underplay the man’s struggle with being gay at a time when homosexuality was as taboo as mixed marriages in the South. The only time the question of his sexuality is even raised, not counting Elliot’s flirtations with one of Lang’s carpenters, is during Tiber’s freeing conversations with Liev Schreiber’s wonderfully appealing, cross-dressing ex-Marine Vilma, who appoints himself the motel’s director of security.

And to think this nonchalance is emanating from the same folks who brought us the open and frank “Brokeback Mountain.” At least the gays in “Taking Woodstock” aren’t offensive stereotypes.

The same, unfortunately, can’t be said for Emile Hirsch’s shell-shocked Vietnam vet, who seems to have wandered in from a second-rate rehash of Oliver Stone’s ’Nam epics “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Platoon.” Don’t get me wrong, Hirsch can be great, as he was in “Milk” and “Alpha Dog.” But he also can be annoying, like in the vastly overrated “Into the Wild” and again here.

At least he’s not as grating as Staunton as Tiber’s stereotypical Jewish mother. About two minutes of her over-the-top stick is more than any human should ever be asked to endure. Ditto for the obligatory LSD trip Elliot takes with a couple of burnouts (Paul Dano and Kelli Garner) in the back of a VW microbus. Wow, man!

Still, they’re just a byproduct of a movie built on a wobbly foundation of too many characters, too many plots and too many head-shaking moments in which the normally brilliant and astute Lee plays it shallow and dumb, if not woefully naïve.

There are undoubtedly moments of brilliance, particularly his ability to capture the enormity of an event that clogged roads and taxed resources beyond comprehension. But they are often usurped by long bouts of inanity – like the annoying hippie theater group working out of an old barn next door to Tiber’s motel – that make you wonder what Lee could possibly be thinking.

And his deliberate nixing of the music, the central component of the festival, is beyond perplexing. Mostly, we’re only made privy to the iconic tunes of Richie Havens, Ravi Shankar and their ilk from a distance, a fait, recognizable whale registering just above the din of a half-million kids looking for pot, sex and a world of peace and prosperity.

But sadly, it would not be long before the kids would sell out all that optimism in pursuit of the all-mighty dollar. That’s what I took from Woodstock the event and that’s what “Taking Woodstock” the movie should have portrayed: three days of peace, love and purchasing power.